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Editor’s note: The following column was originally published in the New Hampshire Union Leader on Oct. 16, 1971.

SUNFLOWER TIME is soon — if not now.

Stimulated by a recent column, John Hammons of the Editorial Department of the Manchester Union Leader, through whose hands this column passes each week, wrote the following:

“I’ve just finished getting your column ready for the composing room and thought I’d drop you a line while I was thinking about it. Subject: Sunflowers. A while back you had quite a discussion about your unsuccessful attempts to dry the seeds for winter feeding. I have the simple solution to your problem.

“Cut the great heads off when they begin to droop and fall over into the garden. Pick a sunny late September afternoon to sit with your wife in the sunshine and break the seeds from their fastenings much as one takes the kernels of corn from the dried cob. It will take no more than an hour to fill a couple of large feed buckets. Take the ‘hulled’ seeds to the hay loft and spread them on three or four grain bags. Every morning when you go up to send hay down to the horses, stir the spread-out seeds with a quick pass of the hand. Within a week or two the seeds will be crackling dry and ready to bag for the winter.

“I think I told you we had two sets of bluebirds in our houses, about 25 yards from the barn and up about four feet from the ground.”

We thank John for his suggestion and are pleased to learn that he had bluebirds at his home in Weare this year.

A longtime reader in Tamworth had a fortunate experience. He wrote:

“September 18, while painting our house, I happened to look toward the sky and saw what at first appeared to be a flock of crows. Looking closer I saw that they weren’t crows. They were headed in a southerly direction and were soaring and were beautiful to watch. I got our field glasses and identified them as osprey. There were at least a hundred of them and perhaps several hundred, as I have no idea how many had gone by before I happened to look up. They were too high up for me to identify the white bottom, but they certainly had the curved wings that help to identify them as osprey. If you should happen to hear of someone else seeing the flock, I would like to hear about it. Is it unusual to see a flock that large around here?”

I certainly hope our reader was correct in his identification of osprey. They are becoming very scarce, and to see an many as a hundred at a time would be most unusual. One of the identifying marks, according to Peterson, is that it flies with a decided kink or crook in its wings. It is this characteristic which our reader was referring to.

Usually, birds seen in this number are broadwing hawks, often accompanied by a few Cooper’s, sharp-shinned, red-tailed, and red-shouldered. It has been my experience in watching the fall hawk migration that ospreys travel singly or in pairs.

We had the following report from one of our readers in Bow:

“About 10 a.m. on the morning of September 19, I saw a large number of hawks circling and milling in the sky. The number kept growing as others joined the group until perhaps there were as many as a hundred. I wondered if they might not be broadwings. Where could they be migrating to?”

From the northern portion of its range the autumnal migration of the broadwing starts during the latter part of August, but the main flight passes through the northern states in September. Although there are a few that winter in the U.S., their winter range is chiefly in northwestern South America and in Central America.

Stacey Cole, Nature Talks columnist for more than 50 years, passed away in 2014. If readers have a favorite column written by Stacey they would like to see reprinted, please drop a note to Jen Lord at jlord@unionleader.com.

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